Here are the answers to the questions posed in yesterday’s last week’s Delightful obscurity post. I’m sorry these took so long to appear on the site. I’ve had a very busy last few days. Chief among those activites which kept me away from the site was the upgrade to Mrs tablequiz.net’s website, leavingcertenglish.net. Check it out if you feel like being educated!

Here are the answers to the two quizzes worth of questions posed in Twofer won. Or should that be “two quiz’s worth”?

I’m on quiz master duty again on Friday evening. If you’re anywhere in the vicinity, please come on in to The Dalton Inn, Claremorris, for a quiz in aid of Claremorris Community Radio. Kick-off is scheduled for 8.30pm, tables of four are €40 and all are welcome!

Are you ready for some answers? In a moment, I will give you the solutions to those (pretty hard) questions from the Pairs event at the European Quiz Championship that I posted yesterday.

First though, I’d like to point out that, with all the excitement over the weekend, I’ve only just gotten around to putting up the podcast of last week’s After the Fact radio show. The theme of the show is fire and you can listen to it at this address: www.mixcloud.com/claremorrisfm/after-the-fact-fire/

Anyway, back to those questions. Click continue reading to see the answers.

Don’t forget, I’m hosting a quiz in Claremorris tonight. It’s at 8.30pm in Warde’s Bar on Main Street. Please come along if you’re anywhere near! We’ve got some picture rounds, an audio round and a couple of Hallowe’en themed rounds. It should be a fun night.

Ok, on with the answers. I alluded to the fact that one of the answers called out the other night was wrong. To be more accurate, one of the questions was wrong.

Some breaking news: the low scores earned by the teams on Monday night last mustn’t have deterred me, as I have agreed to be the quiz master once again, on Friday night next (October 28) in Warde’s Pub, Claremorris. The quiz starts at 8.30pm and you’re all invited! See the calendar for more details.

Anyway, back to the post. Here are the answers to the (quite difficult, I admit) questions posted in yesterday’s Don’t work… too hard.

I wrote a bit about the concept of ‘quiz knowledge’ yesterday. To flesh this out a little more, my point is that all knowledge is (or should be) valid. It’s just a case of a situation arising where the more (shall we say) ‘obscure’ bit of your knowledge become useful. But… shouldn’t the probability of any particular question coming up be identical across all fields? *

It isn’t. I knew almost nothing in the Popular Culture round below but that has never really mattered before. 99% of the time, in Irish table quizzes, questions like these never, ever, come up. Is that ‘right’?

Consider the flip side: you might know someone who would do very well in the round being discussed but, if you asked them, would tell you that they are “terrible” at table quizzes and never take part in them. Surely there’s a flaw here?

By which I mean: is there a flaw in the way most Irish table quizzes are created? Do question setters, perhaps, consider their potential crowd and then design a quiz to suit them more than to really test them? Probably not consciously but almost certainly. To take it further, is there a vernacular in the Irish table quiz world? Could the spectrum of knowledge tested at table quizzes be considered a ‘specialist subject‘ in-and-of itself?